14 Days

Dear Dr. Amy,

My time with you was brief. You have been my therapist for a little over three months now, and when I first started seeing you, I thought I was getting better. When I wrote my last letter to Dr. Leah, I didn’t think that I’d have to write another one so soon. I hate to admit it, but before I met you, I was scared. Fear is not something I like to willingly admit, but you know that already. I was scared that I wouldn’t have another connection with a therapist as strong as the one I had before. I was scared that it would take a long time for me to open up to you, that I’d have to start completely from scratch. I was scared that when you met me, you just wouldn’t get me the same way that Dr. Leah had. 

Therapy during the pandemic is hard. For me, therapy was about the entire experience. I’d walk into the lobby and check in, noticing the vibrant couches and always picking a chair that allowed me to sit by myself, out of the way of others. I’d wait patiently, fully aware of the harsh light bearing down on me. They’re supposed to be soft, calming lights, but lobby lights have always seemed harsh to me, no matter where they are. I’d wait for the minutes to tick by, noticing the numbers change on my bright phone screen. Sometimes, I’d be too anxious to sit still so I’d just stare straight ahead. Other times, I just wanted to get the session over with. Every time though, I always looked forward to hearing my name called. 

Usually, the walk to the therapist’s room is pleasant. We make small talk on the way down, and I anticipate sitting down on the couch, ready to talk. Usually, on the way to the room, I am rolling the words I want to use around in my brain. I am choosing them, picking out exactly what I want to talk about in my one-hour session. When Dr. Leah was my therapist, I sometimes took these one-hour sessions for granted, because I knew that if I forgot anything, I could just tell her next week. 

But I can’t afford to come in weekly anymore, and when they assigned me to you, I knew that I would only be able to interact with you through my web camera. With you, I wasn’t waiting to hear my name called in the lobby. I was always anticipating the chime of the video call starting. With you, I had to be methodical about what I wanted to work on during the session, because I couldn’t see you every week. Because of that, I was more grounded and present. I didn’t dissociate during our sessions as much as I used to in the past. It makes me sad that I’ve never been able to actually meet you in person. But if it’s anything like talking to you over a webcam, I’m sure that our in-person sessions would be nothing short of magic. 

I have always been careful about judgment. Because I never let myself form opinions quickly, I am also guarded about what I tell people. Honestly, I had no idea how I felt after our first session, so I just told my roommates it went fine. Looking back now, I’m just really grateful I didn’t have to actually start from scratch. If it took as long for me to tell you everything as it did for me to tell Dr. Leah, it would’ve taken a long time before we really addressed anything beneath the surface. 

It’s strange to meet someone for the first time and they already know everything about you. I remember I would bring up instances in our first session, and you would already know. I would feel relieved that I wouldn’t have to tell the story again, but a little lost about what I should talk about. So it was like getting to know each other for the first time, but somehow, backwards. I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about that, because the basis of my relationships with people in my life is by getting to know each other through mutual conversation. I wasn’t used to someone knowing so many things about me that I didn’t tell them myself. I was used to choosing very carefully what people knew about me. I was used to constructing my image a certain way to others. So what could I tell you that you didn’t already know?

But even though you knew so much about me, you didn’t let that consume the present. Instead, you let me build from there. In a way, you gave me a clean slate, but I never forgot how I got there because you reminded me that I did it myself. So from our first session onward, I started to ask myself what I really wanted out of therapy. The hard part was out of my way, because you were cognizant of my history. But now I had to focus on the present and think about the future. I had to actively live in it so that I could tell you about it and that’s hard for someone who doesn’t even feel real most of the time. 

Only going to therapy every two weeks was really hard because so many things can happen in just fourteen days. It just wasn’t enough, and not being able to meet you in-person made it even harder. But it was never uncomfortable for me because even though you were far away, the way you listened and gave me space to talk made it feel like you were sitting right across from me. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine it. It sometimes felt like there wasn’t a computer screen separating us. 

Every time we ended a session, I noticed that I started thinking about how long it would be before I would get to talk to you again. And I would have to remember everything, so I could tell you about it when the fourteen days passed. 

There was something different about remote therapy too. During our sessions, I started writing down things you said in my notebook, and I would apply it in my own writing. It let me process the words you were using and how they made me feel, and I would chew on it even after our session. You told me during our second session that you went and looked at my blog. I knew you realized how important writing was to me because you really encouraged me to keep doing it. Even when I told you I had writer’s block, you told me it was okay. You still encouraged me to go back to it when I was ready. 

When you told me that you read my blog, I felt closer to you. You took your own time to understand something very important to me. Perhaps it’s your job, but to me, that was the greatest gift I could have received from you. Because you didn’t have to do it, but you chose to because you knew I cared about it. Coming from a background where people don’t often know what’s happening with me or what I’m doing, I felt more comfortable about sharing my inner thoughts and turmoil with you. I knew that this was your job, but you weren’t just doing all of these things because it was your job. You did it because you care. And I’ve always thought that this was selfish to say, but it feels good when people sometimes give a shit about you. 

With Dr. Leah, I recounted my past and we looked at how it affected my present. With you, I analyzed my present and how it made me feel. I can talk about my past matter of factly, because with practice, I could recount my history without emotion. But I always struggled to talk about what I was thinking and feeling and being completely honest about it. 

I stopped going to class for a reason, and it wasn’t just my claustrophobia. I never felt like I learned anything or that homework was particularly useful. After you’ve tried to kill yourself, school doesn’t really feel like a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I know there’s always time for it, but it didn’t have to consume my life. I’ve started trying to be a better student again, but I still thought assignments were stupid. But for some reason, I always enjoyed yours. Sometimes, your assignments were hard and I wouldn’t know how to apply them in my life. But I tried and I made sure I never forgot your words after every session. That’s why I wrote them down. Because the thing is, words don’t matter in school so long as you pass your exams. But your words mattered to me because they made me think about learning from a different point of view.

To help direct the words I wanted to say, you asked me questions and sometimes, I really couldn’t find an answer. I grew up thinking that was something wrong, that I always had to know what to do, that I always needed to have an answer. Not knowing, in fact, was a weakness because it meant that I wasn’t prepared. And if I weren’t prepared, people would easily take advantage of me, I was told. You taught me that it’s okay to not know, that I had to trust myself even if I didn’t have any idea what was going on inside my head. You taught me that there is always room to learn and grow, that even though I thought I was getting better, that even though I started to relapse, I was still growing in my own way. 

When I first started seeing you, I was leaps and bounds from where I was mentally at a year ago. I was really starting to ask myself what I liked and doing things because I wanted to do them and not because someone expected me to. I had thought that being stuck at home all day would be awful, but little did I know that growing up alone in a house meant that I knew how to keep myself company. But as quarantine dragged out, I could feel my anxiety heighten again. I could feel my depression fall back into its old patterns. I had to fight back against old, unhealthy habits and I felt myself closing up again. No matter how hard I tried, it felt like I was slowly slipping and I felt myself become numb again, like how I had taught myself to live when I was little. 

This time around, I knew I needed to ask for help, but I still didn’t know how. So I tried to talk to you about it, and with every session, I started to peel the layers of my skin back.

The most important thing I’ve learned from going to therapy for so many years is that the connection you develop with your therapist is unlike any other you experience in your life, especially for a neglected child who was always told to shut up. Especially for a child that taught herself the only way to survive was to not feel. Especially for a child that would rather hurt herself than let the people around her down. It is inside the safe space that a therapist creates that such a child can be coaxed out of her mind cave. But she won’t do it willingly. She won’t tell you, but it’s because she’s scared of what will happen if she dares. 

Although every session I’ve had with you has overall been positive, we talked a lot about negative emotions. The first we dealt with was anger. You helped me face the anger inside me, the emotion I’ve never wanted to admit I could feel. To me, it was such an ugly feeling, and something I was used to experiencing from other people. Anger was always destructive to me, and because I knew how traumatizing it was, I never wanted to feel it for myself. So I never admitted that I could be angry, much less when I did feel it. But I’ve been angry for a long time, and even though I am angry at many things, I was always the angriest at myself. For letting people take advantage of me, for not being strong enough to deal with the fury of someone else’s anger, for never being enough, no matter what I did. 

I shared my anger with you, because I’ve always been angry at the fact that I couldn’t fix myself and the way I was. But you explained to me that the power of anger lies in the wielder, that we choose exactly where we want our anger to go. Anger, you said, is a negative emotion and it’s normal to not want to acknowledge it. But it’s a part of who we are as people, and to ignore it would be ignoring a vital, powerful part of ourselves. I am very rarely truly angry, but when I am, I can feel my entire being explode in flames. For years, I pushed it down and let the pressure build. I pretended it didn’t exist and the flames started to consume me. I decided to write about my anger to process it, and it helped me face the fire burning inside me for the first time in my life. 

I often came to our sessions feeling burdened by the weight of responsibility and duty. I was often stretched thin, but I never thought of it that way. It still felt like I wasn’t doing enough, that I wasn’t working hard enough, that I wasn’t contributing enough to society, that I wasn’t supporting my friends enough, that I just would never be enough for everything and everyone around me. So you asked me about boundaries, and I remember staring at you through the screen when you asked if I set any for myself and for the people in my life. You suggested that if I spent some time drawing my own boundaries, perhaps it would make the fire burning inside me feel more manageable. And perhaps it wouldn’t feel like the flames were always threatening to swallow me from the inside out. I hold onto my values because they are the backbone of who I am as a person. Yet I had never considered that boundaries were an essential part to preserving my values, because if I continued being at the beck and call of everyone that needed me around the clock, I wouldn’t ever be able to truly sustain my values. 

Therein lies communication because it is necessary to communicate in order to convey boundaries. For some reason, I don’t know how to talk about my feelings or tell people what I’m thinking. The truth is, there are thousands of words running through my subconscious at any given minute and it’s a mess to untangle one single coherent train of thought. So I just let everything stew inside me and toiled quietly instead like I had always been told to. 

For some reason, I could talk to you. I really appreciated that you never asked me how something made me feel. You just let my words take me there. I tell my life with stories and usually the words tumble out in waterfalls when I speak. More often than not, I catch myself before I ever wander into inner thoughts and feelings territory but with you, I felt okay continuing. The problem is that I often don’t know how because I don’t know what to say. And yet somehow, our conversations always wander there and even though it’s hard, I am thankful nonetheless. You slowly drew me out of the tunnel I dug for myself, but you didn’t have to come find or rescue me. You always just waited for me to come out on my own. You let me do it myself when I was ready. 

So after a few sessions, you asked me why I had never set boundaries before and I told you I never felt like I needed to. I told you it never felt like any of the powerful, negative emotions I felt ever seemed justified. I also vividly remember choking up when I finally admitted to you that the reason I can’t ever relax or love myself the way I deserve is because I don’t feel like I am ever enough. It wasn’t even a matter of approval after a while. I had just conditioned myself into thinking that no matter what I did, I could always do better. That no matter what happened, I could always be more. That no matter who I was, I would still never be enough to feel like I deserve a place in this world. 

We never talked about my diagnoses really; we used them as context to understand how the symptoms were affecting me. Yes my severe mood swings were because I have BPD. Yes I want to cut myself because of my anxiety. Yes I fall into depressive episodes so deep that it takes weeks or months to feel slightly more normal. But you never made my diagnoses a centerpiece. You didn’t let them define me. 

The last time I saw you, I was really hurting inside. I was so anxious that I could feel my chest tightening as I forced the words out, and they just fell from my mouth in waves. I told you that when my episodes are at their worst, I lose my only catharsis. I lose my ability to cry. The last time this happened, I had just tried to walk in front of a car and I didn’t cry for over 9 months. I told you that I was so lost because I didn’t have hope. As the session went on, you and I explored why it was so hard for me to talk about what I was feeling inside. It’s because most days, I don’t feel anything at all. When people ask me how I’m doing and I say I’m fine, it’s because that’s exactly how I am. If I peel back the surface a little bit, I’ll probably feel a tinge of sadness because I am lost. But most of the time, I’m just numb and I’ve hidden the part of me that could feel so far inside myself that I have no idea how to access it. 

“Shame does not see the light of day,” you said. You pointed out that I struggle with vulnerability because I was scrutinized for so long that I had to always present myself in a certain light to make sure that I was accepted. You challenged me to start noticing when I was hiding my vulnerability. You also asked me to think of ways that I was enough, even if they were small things in my daily life. 

Fourteen days later, I had no answer to that question. I couldn’t come up with a single reason. It always just felt like I was staying afloat everyday, and I realized that when I couldn’t figure out how I was enough, I had fallen completely out of touch with myself. I had so many reasons for why I wasn’t enough and absolutely none for why I was. I felt something then. I felt my heart break inside me, which was weird, because for the longest time, my heart had felt like it wasn’t there.

But I also felt something else. I felt understanding. Not of myself, because even if I can’t access my emotions, I am actively aware of them. I felt like you understood me, and that made me feel seen. So thinking back to that question now, I think I have an inkling of an answer. I always felt enough in your presence. Because not only did you seem to understand me, but you didn’t make me feel crazy. And because of that, I could let my guard down just a little bit every fourteen days I got to see you.

My favorite thing about having you as my therapist was your connection to my roots. My heritage and my family run in my blood and I am fiercely proud of where I come from. Because you speak Chinese, you let me communicate with you in my mother tongue. Sometimes, I wouldn’t even notice but I would switch languages when I told stories and you never stopped me. You just kept listening and nodding, sometimes with a hint of a smile on your face and that was all I needed to keep sharing with you. I have spent a lot of time in the last few months coming to terms with how my roots have shaped me to this day, and not only did you witness it firsthand, but you heard me recount it in the language I had to give up when I started going to school. 

Because you gave me the space to share my stories with you, it made me feel real. It brought my feet back to the ground just a little bit, and now, I want to keep practicing. I think we both know that I choose what I say carefully, but I want to try what I’ve learned from you. I am going to tell you how I’m feeling. 

I told you last time that I’m not happy, that even though I felt happy during this shelter-in-place, it was always fleeting. And that’s just how life has always been for me. Flickering, barely there. Thinking about having to start over again with a new therapist makes my chest feel heavy, and I think that’s sadness. Not the melancholy kind of sadness I usually feel, but the kind of sad that is bittersweet. I am scared that I will relapse again and again because it saps my energy every time I do. I am angry that I keep falling into depressive episodes where I feel aimless and unmotivated to do basic things like washing dishes, because even though I am trying so hard everyday, it doesn’t always seem like I’m improving. I’ve always wanted to be perfect but I find flaws with myself all the time and that’s why it’s hard for me to let people in. I think they will see me the way I see myself and leave, like people have done before. I am hurting so much inside all the time, and it feels like my anxiety will claw its way out from inside me and turn me into an ugly monster. I am so exhausted of my moods swinging across the spectrum from hour to hour and I’m sick of being stuck in my own head because it actually makes me think I’m insane for some of the shit that goes on in there. 

But Dr. Amy, you always believed in me. And despite all of these feelings and thoughts I’ve shared with you in the brief time we had, I want to have the same faith in me that you do. It’s going to take a lot of unlearning and self-acceptance, but if you’ve taught me anything at all, it’s that I am strong enough to make it happen for myself. 

I realize now that among the millions of thoughts in my head all the time, I am rarely in them. I am always thinking about other people and other things but I never want to dwell on myself because I usually would just pick myself apart. It’s an old habit, I know. And I know you can’t give me practice assignments anymore, so I’ll give this one to myself. I am going to start with fourteen days. Every fourteen days, I am going to remind myself a reason why I am enough. And when I tell myself this reason, I’m not going to question it. I am going to believe and I am going to trust myself. 

I know I’m going to have a rough time at first, but I’ve learned that a lot can happen in fourteen days. In fourteen days, your therapist can become a friend. In fourteen days, a human can look for a lost part of herself and face it. In just fourteen days and two one-hour conversations, a broken, self-loathing person could learn to confide in a complete stranger. 

I’m still taking baby steps. But you showed me that fourteen days can make a difference. And now I’m thinking what can happen if I stuck around for even longer than that. I love myself a little more now because of you. So even if I fall backward like I do sometimes, that’s okay. At least I’m facing the right direction now so that when I pick myself up, I know where I’m supposed to go. It’s a long way, but I’m glad I started that journey with you.

“See you in two weeks,” you tell me at the end of every session. I might not see you in the next fourteen days, but I know you’re there. We made webcam therapy work, so I know that even if I miss talking to you, you’ll always be in my thoughts. 

Until next time,

Ella